Saturday, Apr 26, 2025
# Anything Worth Doing is Worth Doing Poorly
When we are good at something, and we perform it well, we get rewarded. Our brains enter a state of flow, increasing our focus on the task and deriving deep satisfaction from the performance. Our peers admire and praise us, and society awards us with pay and accolades.
In both business and personal matters we are advised to play to our strengths, to focus on the things we do well—to be exceptional in our own way—and spend less time on the things we are not good at. Perhaps we are advised to outsource responsibilities that lie beyond our core competency, to hire an expert. It is often convenient to delegate less preferred tasks to someone (or something) else.
Across YouTube and television we find innumerable opportunities to spectate others who perform at the tops of their respective activities. It is thrilling to observe the grace and fluidity of peak skill and talent. Conversely, it is awkward and embarrassing to watch a novice fumble through a performance. These feelings are more acute if we ourselves are the novice. And so we tend to spectate rather than participate.
# Growth in the Age of Machines
We are not machines. We do not sit ready on a shelf waiting to be unboxed. We are not trained in a noisy cage inside a data center and then released to the world as a dramatically different "new version" when we are done. We learn interactively and grow deliberately.
When we were born we were not good at anything. We were bad at even feeding ourselves. It took years of learning and struggle to learn to walk, eat, talk, read, and socialize. As we grow into children, adolescents, and adults our world expands with new experiences. We grow.
But at times, sometimes as children, sometimes as adults, we resist growing. We want to regress, or perhaps to rest comfortably in a familiar space where we are not challenged, and not have to confront the uncomfortable feelings that come with being bad at things again.
# What is Worth Doing?
"If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."
– G. K. Chesterson, What's Wrong with the World
Value and worth are highly subjective, but that is, in itself, the point of all this. What is worth doing for you is something only you can decide.
Is it worthwhile to read a book? To learn an instrument? To train your body? To become capable of doing something that you could not do before? To cook your own meals? To build relationships? To experience something new?
Someone else cannot decide the value of these things, and they also cannot do them for you. So no matter how good or bad you are at any of these activities, it is up to you to do these things. You cannot delegate your life to be lived by someone else.
There are a great many things that you could do for yourself. You could clean your house, do your taxes, make something instead of buying it. In exploring some of these things you might find that it is much easier and perhaps more pleasant to leave the hard work to someone else.
But remember that these things are still valuable to you. And in spite of the initial feeling of inadequacy or discomfort you might experience by doing something poorly, remember that in doing so you become more valuable to yourself. You become the proprietor of your own satisfaction, of your own success, rather than relying on someone else who does not value you or share your sense of what is important (even if they value your money).
# Be Uncomfortable
It is easier to overcome a challenge when you accept it will be hard to begin with. Nothing makes you feel more hopeless than a quick and easy win that perpetually seems just out of reach but never manifests. Be patient. Accept the discomfort of waiting.
For innovators, significant discomfort may come from being told that you are wrong, and that your ideas are nonsense. People will keep saying that until you succeed. They may even continue to say it after you succeed, unable to change their world view.
Give yourself permission to be bad at something. Give yourself permission to make mistakes. Only when you get out of your own way will you be open to novel approaches, to learning, to growing in new an unexpected ways.
"Sucking at somethin' is the first step towards being sorta good at something."
– Jake, Adventure Time
So get out there, and do a poor job. It is only the first step.